I sat, drained and bloody, the pistol pushing my head toward the ground, as the battle sounds ebbed away. I stared down at my hands, wondering what was happening to Boon and Wildman, the Kurds, Kylah, Marhaz and Farhan.
“Stay still, bitch,” the man behind me hissed, when I tried to raise my head. He wasn’t fighting. He seemed to be waiting for the fighting to end, which was happening quickly, by the sound of the diminishing gunfire. It wasn’t hard to figure out who he was. He was an American. A merc. He must have been from the Apollo team in Sinjar.
“What we have here,” the man said, “is a Mexican standoff.”
He put his hand around my neck and pulled me to a sitting position. In front, facing me, was a force of Muslim fighters with their assault rifles drawn. I saw three men in Quds uniforms, two in attack position, and one quietly staring, and realized they must be Shia militia. Facing them, the remaining ISIS force of a dozen men, weapons up, glancing over their shoulders like they wanted to run. To their left, Wildman and a remainder of the mercenaries, along with a remnant of the Iraqi army that must have joined the battle, were standing with rifles pointed in all directions. I figured my captor had a team behind him, probably ten Tier One warriors, if they’d all survived.
Shia, Quds, mercs, ISIS, Americans, Kurds, and Iraqi Army irregulars, all staring at each other across a jihadi-scarred battlefield. It wasn’t a Mexican standoff, exactly. It was an Iraqi one.
And me, right in the middle.
“They came for me,” I yelled into the silence. “The others fight with me. We have no fight with you.”
“We have fight with you,” the Shia leader said in English. It was the tall man from the technical, the one whose small gunner’s head had been forcibly destroyed.
“And we have issues with you,” my captor snarled. Beside him, someone spit tobacco into the dirt. They were both right, of course. The Americans and the Iran-backed Shia had been killing each other, off and on, for the past decade. This mutual hatred was inevitable, and justified. But if someone started shooting, the chances were good we were all going to die.
I looked to the right, at the body of Farhan, the man who had brought us to this impasse. I saw Boon huddled over Kylah, working his med kit. He was moving quickly but precisely. I could see his tension.
“Salam!” I said. Peace. “There is no reason for us to die. We came here to fight a common enemy. They are beaten and on the run. They are fleeing to their brothers now.”
Nobody spoke. The Shia leader was staring with anger above me, at my captor, who I assumed was staring back the same way.
“Put down your weapons,” I yelled to Wildman and the remains of Bear’s mercs. “Show them this battle is over.”
Nobody moved. Then a man behind Wildman stepped forward and put his AK-47 on the ground. It was one of the Kurds, the one who had convinced the rest to fight here with us, when they could have gone back to Erbil. I thought others would follow, especially the Kurds, but nobody did.
Failure, I thought, but then the Quds leader spoke. “We will give you four hours,” he said, “while we pursue and destroy the remnants of this ISIS force. When we return, everyone must be gone. This place is ours. We will kill anyone who remains.”
“Fuck you,” the man behind me snarled, but I cut him off, even though I was his prisoner.
“Accepted,” I said, and immediately the Quds commander turned to the assembled Shia and spoke to them in Arabic. The ISIS soldiers looked at each other, then laid down their weapons. Thank God there were no martyrs among them.
“You mongrel whore,” my captor said, forcing my face back to the ground with the point of his gun. It didn’t matter now. The deed was done. I turned as he ground my face into the dirt, so that with one eye I could see Boon, bent over Kylah, moving up and down as he worked on her.
“I’m calling Rodriguez,” my captor said to his second, as the sound of the last Shia technical faded away. It was just us mercenaries now.
“Don’t bother,” I said through a faceful of dirt. I didn’t know who Rodriguez was, but I knew what kind of man he was: middle manager, mission manager. I’d answered to one myself, not so long ago.
“Who asked you, traitor?”
“Winters. Your boss,” I muttered, through a mouthful of mud.
My captor pulled me up, but only an inch. “What’s that?”
“Winters. Brad Winters. He’s coming.”
The man didn’t answer. He hadn’t been expecting that.
“Rodriguez. He told you I’d be here,” I continued. “That’s how you found me, after we lost you in the desert.” I was guessing, but I knew I was right. My captor’s silence confirmed it.
“I told him,” I said.
“You told Rodriguez?”
“I told Winters. Last night. I said to meet me here.”
“You’re bullshitting.”
“Then call him,” I said. “I have his private number, in my sat phone.” It was the prince’s sat phone, but no need to get picky. “I called him on it eight hours ago.”
I didn’t need to say anything more. Let the man call Winters; let Winters sort this out. I could tell, from the way he was acting, this team leader liked to keep things simple. That was why Winters hired men like him: to complete missions. I’d hired men like him myself. They were useful. But the last thing you wanted a man like that doing was thinking too much.
Thinking was my mission-critical skill, not his.